18 yesterday. Haven't been out for a while. With my tailbone messed up, and being kinda spoiled from Bohemia I wasn't in a big hurry to get back out and then I got sick, and I still am sick now, but I decided to tough it out to go to Alpine Valley with my mom and the boy yesterday.
I think the entire skiing population of Chicago was there yesterday. I had some fun and even poached a little pow, but i doubt i got more than fifteen runs all day. At least the sun was shining and the beer was cold.
I do have to correct something. What I really meant to say was the entire population of Chicagoland that ever wanted to ski, but never did before. The place was so crowded with beginners it was incredibly dangerous. My kid got hit twice. Once by a little kid on a snowboard and once by a twentysomething guy on a snowboard. I had an incredible number of close calls. In one run I got cut off/near missed 5 times. Several times people went careening through the lift lines unable to stop. Usually they end up swimming in the creek, but fortunately for them, it has been so cold that it was frozen over. I even saw a runaway snowboard and saw that hit a few people on the way down. Oh, and I almost forgot about the lady who fell down the stairs in the lodge while wearing her ski boots. She landed on her head at the bottom, at least she was conscious. It was pretty ridiculous.
PS: for those of you who don't know how runaway snowboards happen, well usually it goes something like this. Get off chairlift at top of hill. Try snowboarding for a while and then get incredibly frustrated because you don't know what you are doing. So you decide to try and ride on it like a sled. This goes well for a little while until you start going too fast, so then you fall over and then there goes the snowboard...
PPS: usually, Chicago doesn't have enough snow to make running through the trees at a place like Alpine viable, but we have had more than enough snow to make these spots viable this year. If we get a big dump,
on a weekday I might consider giving this place another try. Yesterday though, even though the snow in the trees was mostly played out I still felt safer in there. At least the funking trees stand still.
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